Question of the Day: Why Are Gun Control Advocates So Ignorant About Guns?

Nevada Background Checks for Gun Purchases, Question 1 is on today’s ballot in Nevada. Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn has pumped a lot of money into the effort to bring “universal background checks” to the Silver State. In the interview above, Mr. Wynn opens his mouth and removes all doubt that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to gun purchases. Nor does he seems to grasp the fact that people who aren’t on his payroll like to get a word in edgewise from time-to-time.

In these two characteristics — ignorance and a desire to parade it in public — Mr. Wynn is not alone. From calling magazines “clips” to mistaking semi-automatic for fully-automatic firearms, to recommending that a home defender fire a shotgun through a closed door, gun control advocates display a stunning lack of gun sense (to use their phrase). At the very least you’d think that people advocating from “tougher” gun laws would know existing law.

Why are they so loathe to do any research on guns, gun laws or gun owners?

97 Responses to Question of the Day: Why Are Gun Control Advocates So Ignorant About Guns?

If self-appointed Gun Control Advocate Number One – Hillary Rodham Clinton – had instead declined to use the phrase “Gun Control” in the previous 12 months, she would probably be touring her new residence today.

This is really an easy answer they have no experience with firearms. It’s like rocket science to an average person you don’t see NASA hiring people that have no experience with rocket technology. Just like anything else if you don’t know anything about it you shouldn’t be making decisions upon it. If you have never owned a firearm in your life or put your hands on one why do you think it’s your job to make regulations about them when you know absolutely nothing about them? This is very typical in America people that don’t know s*** about things are the ones making decisions on these things typical political nightmare.

I’ve had liberal hippie friends (active duty AF officers at that, keep your jokes to yourself) that initially scoffed at guns. Then I took them shooting and the pure fun of making coke cans dance turned them. The “oh yeah, this can be fun!” aspect opened their eyes to an entire world of American society they’d never explored. Past that, casual conversations of dimly lit streets in Denver, Colorado Springs, (insert your nearest city), made the whole idea make sense. If you’re willing to break down the idea of personal responsibility and fun, it’s a palatable concept to even the staunchest granola muncher.

Most laws are not written by law makers. Usually they are written by a lobbyist/special interest group who then hands out the talking points to the law makers and their proxies, which they regurgitate in a Pavlovian fashion.

Most bills are actually crafted by staffers, following an outline provided by lobbyists or bribers. Smart staffers sneak all sorts of loopholes into the convoluted ambiguous language of their compositions. Once the bill becomes law, the staffer quits and becomes a millionaire by being a consultant to the industry or group affected by the bill and letting them in on the loopholes.

Bills should be required to be hand written by the legislator proposing them, no more than 5 pages long and the legislator tested on what he has written four weeks later. If the test is flunked, the bill is torn up and the process starts all over again.

Rather than adding rules to making laws in order to get better laws, just use old-fashioned market forces — allow anyone covered by a law to challenge it in a jury trial, and if the jury finds it unclear, internally inconsistent, inconsistently enforced, confusing, or in any other way they simply cannot agree on what it means, then it is voided in its entirety.

No appeals, because if a jury finds it confusing, an appeal is just proof that it is confusing.

No rewrite, just void it, because writing laws is up to legislatures, not juries.

Inconsistent enforcement obviously means the law is not clear enough to enable consistent enforcement.

Inconsistent verdicts are part and parcel of inconsistent enforcement.

But there has to be some accountability for losing such a challenge, so I suggest that any losing challenger be punished as if found guilty of the challenged law.

We aren’t ignorant….The same could be said to the racist, nationalistic, nihilistic, anti-human right nut jobs on this website.

I hope to god this passes as Nevada has a higher per capita crime rate than California and most of the guns from that hellhole state have been smuggled into the safer states.

But Herr Trump will undo all the progress of saving human lives.

A Trump victory means there are a lot more idiots who know how to vote against their own best interests than anyone suspected. And despite the win, Trump is STILL a racist, and misogynist and a total idiot. President Trump, just saying that made me throw-up a little.

Well to be fair, that’s President-Elect Trump. And he’s had that title for a little over 24 hours. Hasn’t been sworn in, issued any executive orders, signed any bills into law. Not exactly sure how America is no longer free because of him. We’re still living under the Obama administration, so any loss of freedom you feel Sunshine is attributable to him.

Funny most of the weapons fired at me by terror groups weren’t attributable to the people of the gun, more like comrades of the gun…

You need better talking points and maybe some fresh air and exercise. This anger is unhealthy.

Arming terrorists? You mean President Obama and his DOJ and DOS that smuggled arms to Central American drug cartels in order to convince the American people that more gun control was needed; and armed Libyan resistance fighters in order to overthrow an admittedly despotic but more-or-less peaceful regime, which gave rise to ISIS and allowed them to terrorise multiple nations throughout the Middle East? You mean those people of the- wait. They’re Gun Control Advocates. Gun control advocates who gave arms to criminals and terrorists expressly for the purpose of tracking their usage in crimes and using that to push their agenda.

Yeah, pretty sure that wasn’t People of the Gun. That was People of the Gun Control Agenda.

Uh, no. That would be your shining examples of progressivism – Hillary and Obama. They want to disarm American citizens residing in the US, but have no issues sending boatloads of arms to sketchy foreign pseudo-allies, who immediately, by ineptitude or design, transfer them to groups like ISIS. The entire Fast and Furious and Gun Walker debacles were attempts by the current administration to flood Mexico with guns so they could use the bloodshed to support a press for more domestic gun control.

Trump and his team are going to kick the shit out of statists like you over the next 4 years and I can’t wait to watch. Put your big boy pants on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride for your side pal.

That’s ok. Your publicly available treasonous statements are more than enough for the Trump DOJ to track you down and throw you in a dark hole to await a bullet to the back of the head. Have fun leftie…

As one of your commies said…

“People have to die”… Unfortunately for you, we’re the ones with all three branches of government and all the guns.

The Second Amendment will be safe for decades to come when the GOP appoint 3 new SCOTUS justices..

You should move to Europe if you don’t like it.
But be aware that you will likely be chopped up by euro-ihadists eventually if you move there. Europe will be under Sharia Law within a decade or two. The average Muslim family in Europe has 8 offspring,

Thank you for illustrating (for the umpteen thousandth time) the primary Progressive tactic: declaring that your political opponents are stupid, crazy, and/or corrupt … in the desperate hope that onlookers categorically dismiss the policies of said political opponents without evaluating them. (If you think someone is stupid, crazy, and/or corrupt, their stupid, crazy, and/or corrupt policies would not be worthy of consideration.)

Progressives do this for two reasons:
(1) Facts are almost never on their side.
(2) Progressives are terrified of being ridiculed and ostracized. They assume that everyone else is equally terrified of being ridiculed and ostracized and thus hope that they can bully their political opponents into submission.

For many gun control supporters it’s just part of a unified agenda like letting men playing dress up in the women’s locker room. To be honest, it isn’t much different for conservatives. Supporting The Second Amendment is just part of a limited government agenda.

The main difference is that supporting a limited government agenda requires a lot more thought so even conservatives who don’t personally like guns refrain from imposing their view on others.

Wynn is sure sending mixed signals in this clip with Cavuto. On the one hand he says he donated $50K to Bloomberg’s ballot initiative campaign to force Nevada UBC that conforms to Fed standards, and then spent much of the rest of the time not very coherently complaining about the Fed standard in the form of the ATF 4473 (“starts with 9”) questions that have to do with testosterone, cold meds with codeine, and medical marijuana. He did seem troubled by white collar or other non-violent crime being punished by abrogation of 2nd Amendment rights especially when based only on accusation and not due process conviction.

The main thing I got from listening to him was that he’s confused, and he may not have had his ear plug properly adjusted (he acted more like he didn’t hear Cavuto than just talked over him, but I could be mistaken).

When I think of 3rd World hellhole, such progressive examples of achievement come to mind…Chicago, Baltimore, DC…why is it Dem run cities are such violent places? I’m thinking it’s not NRA members shooting each other.

Dude. I’m heavily armed. I’m not afraid of anything. Try it sometime – that self-reliance thing progressives abhor – it’s pretty awesome to stand on your own two feet, and you can see a lot farther than people who are bent over and begging for help.

I don’t know about you sweetheart, but I’ve served in a third-world hellhole. I shit you not, there is a 20-foot bronze statue of Bill Clinton in the middle of the capital city of Kosovo- you know, the country the size of most counties in the US? Maxe up of a piece of former Yugoslavia. Yeah- the one he bombed the hell out of in order to take the TV cameras off BlowjobGate and his impeachment. I assure you, the United States would have to go a long damned way to become half as bad as that hellhole and if it did, you would be praying to whatever goddess/humanist/spaghetti monster you believe in to befriend one of us gun nuts. Kosovars don’t have that option. Private weapons are illegal. Their government is ridiculously corrupt, their economy is non-existent, and the people rely on USAID and UNESCO to keep their power on. If you think this country is a third world hellhole, go live in the Balkans for a year. If you don’t get mistaken for the wrong ethnicity you might get to keep your head attached.

Wrong again, Bucko. Take Chiraq as a prime example. Highest crime rate in the country, with rampant shootings, muggings, and other violent crime, so uncontrolled that the city has pretty much given up on trying to stop it. And what caused this? Decades under corrupt Democrat rule – the same Democratic machine that churned out your hero, Obama. Chicago has been a third world hell hole for how many years? And Democratic leadership there has no way to figure out how to stop it.

Because they aren’t interested in something they find detestable, deplorable, or they can’t imagine ever using.

For them, a firearm may as well be a turd. It has no function except to be disgusting.

As long as they don’t ever have to own one, see one, or allow others to have it, life is as it should be.

Now the mature person that isn’t living in fantasyland understands the historical and current critical role firearms (or more generally weapons) play and their inseparable relationship to liberty, tyranny, and defense of life.

Because coercive government attracts people who wish to expand coercive government. Expanding power requires only knowledge of where power is, and how to scare voters into putting it under their control.

I am entitled to my opinion. I don’t like guns, I don’t need a gun, I don’t know why anyone needs a gun. I get along just fine every day with owning one. I have my opinion the same that you have yours about gay rights. You aren’t gay, you’ve never been gay, you probably don’t know anyone in your circle of friends who is gay. You really shouldn’t have an opinion about being gay until you’ve tried gay, and tried it catching and pitching.

I think you will find that most of the people who want to restrict the rights of another group are generally ignorant of the aspects of the right or the characteristics of the people who hold that right. To the adversarial party, the right in itself is so repellent, that they want nothing to do with it beyond making it go away. It is our nature to have an opinion on damn near anything, and to vehemently pursue the destruction of all which we detest.

Your view here is basically telling me that without knowing me you think society would be better if I were dead, and that the world would be better if a certain friend of mine had gotten raped, and the country would be better if a bunch of kids I was responsible for had been molested — because the reason those things didn’t happen is that someone had a gun.

Why would anyone want a gun? To keep from being assaulted or killed, to keep from being raped, to keep kids from being molested. To say you don’t understand why anyone would want a gun is to say you don’t understand why anyone would want to keep from being killed, or raped, or molested.

Why are gun-control advocates so ignorant about guns? The much better and much more insightful question: why do so many gun-control advocates define and demand policy on firearms when they know so little about firearms?

First of all, many gun-control advocates are elitists who have deluded themselves into thinking that they, and they alone, know what is best for us little people. Thus, in their minds, they already have a commanding knowledge of firearms which qualifies them to tell us what to do.

Second, most gun-control advocates operate on altruism, fantasy, and emotion. Facts and reality are unimportant in their calculus. Their altruism suggests that life would be better if we could reduce/eliminate firearms; their fantasy suggests that it is actually possible to reduce/eliminate firearms; and the prospect of getting closer to a gun-free utopia feels so good that they cannot contain themselves and speak to advance gun-control. Whether or not they have a commanding knowledge of firearms doesn’t matter. Driving toward their unarmed utopia feels good and is all that matters.

Simply this: they believe their superficial understanding of guns as is all they need to know, so they don’t challenge themselves to learn or understand any other viewpoints. They have a blind spot and they’re either unaware of it or deeply uncomfortable with the idea of seriously challenging their worldview because they’re so attached to it.

Guns, to them, are “tools of violence,” and violence is bad. Ergo, guns are bad. People who don’t agree with that idea, which they see as a plain and simple truth, are impossible for them to understand since they lack a perspective to do so. So they revert to labeling pro-gun people as dumb or evil to explain away why someone would willingly do something they know to be so dangerous and foolhardy.

If you imagine (for the sake of argument) that you believe that guns have no utility but to do evil unto others, then why would you want to become more informed about the details and nuances of gun designs, ballistics, etc.? What’s the incentive to research when you already know “guns kill people?” What’s the relevance of knowing which ones are better at it? You know that you want the world to eschew violence, and anything that reduces the supply, availability and popularity of guns feels like a step forward toward that ideal.

If the anti-gunners could imagine (for the sake of argument) that they have won and mankind eschews violence, what does that world look like? Ironically, it looks a lot like a pro-gun world. Guns present virtually no risk without intent to use them for harm. They can be hazardous if mishandled, but it’s easy to be mindful with them like you would with your car, ladders, etc. Your default position when you see a stranger with a gun is trust rather than mistrust. Target shooting is harmless fun. If you don’t care for guns you don’t own any and don’t go shooting. No biggie–to each their own.

Look…people are STUPID. War is peace-freedom is slavery. If anyone saw the idiots “protesting” last night and didn’t understand why we need to be armed-heavily armed-there no hope for you. Billionaires included…

Why are gun control opponents so pedantic? Clip vs magazine? It doesn’t really matter to someone who owns neither. Semi auto vs fully automatic? Show a gun control advocate a skillfully wielded AR in a 3-gun competition and they’ll find it just as scary as the fully auto guns they’ve only seen in the movies. Shifting the terminology to MSR? The same people arguing the assault rifle features are only cosmetic are the same ones arguing you don’t stand a chance without one if you ask for a SHTF recommendation. Introduce a non shooter to the fun of shooting. Convince them of the right of the individual to provide for their own personal safety. Argue against a top down approach to stopping gun misuse. You’re not going to convince anyone by rolling your eyes at them for confusing a magazine with a clip.

I spent more than 50 years considering “clip” and “magazine” interchangeable, and was never corrected, although I am sure I used the wrong term while being instructed in the military. Making it a big deal is kinda silly. Do you know what he means?

“The regressive left seems to be much more about belonging than about truth.”

Yes. Very much yes. Hence my comment above, “Progressives are terrified of being ridiculed and ostracized.”

And, assuming that everyone else is as terrified of being ridiculed and ostracized as they are, Progressives exploit this supposed universal facet of the human condition and direct their venom at firearm owners — hoping to insult and ostracize us into submission.

To quote a few phrases from an illustrious poster above:
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The same “civilized people of the gun” that armed foreign terror groups.

The same “civilized people of the gun” that refuses to take responsibly for their actions in terrifying a free American society. (America is no longer free due to trump)

I hope your proud in turning America into a 3rd world hellhole.

But Herr Trump will undo all the progress of saving human lives.
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The above are examples of the left accusing others for the very things they are doing as a means of distracting the attention of the useful fools and special snowflakes who are not smart enough to do a little research on what is actually going on and who is doing it.

To the extent that America is no longer free, the finger prints of the far left are all over it.

I think some of it comes down to different points of view on this between the two camps (i mean DUH, but hear me out). For the gun control crowd, to many of them guns are a MORAL issue… owning a gun, using one, etc is a morally reprehensible act. So they feel no need to “educate” or “inform” themselves on the issue… and putting yourself in their shoes, why would they? As a (poor) analogy, consider this. I think most of us here would agree that pedophilia is a disgusting, morally reprehensible act. Do you feel a need to educated yourself about the practical aspects of pedophilia? How best to go about it? Specific techniques? The appropriate terminology? Of course not. In fact, I bet even just considering the questions above made your skin crawl, right? In fact you, like many of us, would probably take PRIDE in the fact that you don’t know anything extensive about pedophilia, right? Because it’s disgusting and terrible and even learning about it would be pretty f***ing gross. Consider that to many of the anti-gun crowd, THATS about how they view guns. They don’t need to be educated about gun ownership to write legislation against it, just like you and I don’t need to know anything about pedophilia to write appropriate laws against it. They know its wrong and terrible and should be banned and stamped out wherever possible, and for them, that’s enough.

To me, nothing better represents the ignorance of gun-grabbing politicians like Diana DeGette (D-Colorado) explaining high-cap magazines and how by passing a 15-round limit, the high-cap mags would, over time, eventually all be used up and out of service. She had no friggin idea that magazines could be reloaded. And yet there she is spearheading legislation banning them. Unfortunately, that moron got reelected.

If I had not actually seen her do that (on TV), you could never convince me that anyone was that stupid, and *certainly* not stupid enough to be that ignorant and put herself forward as an expert of some kind. That was amazing. I mean, I actually reuse one magazine several times in one day, from time to time!

The less they know, the stronger their argument, as silly as that sounds, you might have seen this phenomena where a person unable to string enough words into a coherent sentence fills the missing info gaps with, “uhh”, “uhhm”, “you know what I’m saying?”, and “like” a bunch of times. This is the bigger brother of that social disorder, the stringing together of blatant BS and mendacious cherry-picked “personal” facts but served with an increasingly tenacious knowledge that despite the speakers lack of intelligence; they are inherently right.

It’s is the reason they are all dying inside on the left after Presumptive lost cabin pressure and was last seen flying over New York, (AHAHHAAHAHHAHAA HAAHAHAHAHHAH AHAHHAHHAHAH AHAHAHAHAH AHHAAHHA).

Sorry, I’m gonna be laughing at their fate for decades to come, hehehehhehehehehe.

Okay, I subjected myself to his coherence-challenged attempt to communicate three times, and I think what he’s saying boils down to this: having background checks before buying a gun is a great idea, but some of the reasons the law says we can’t buy a gun are just STUPID.

I actually agree — except I don’t think that the government should be doing the background checks. I’d assign the task to the JPFO, give them taxpayer money to do it, and forbid them from telling the government anything but how many background checks were made by county/parish and municipality.